Friday, June 16, 2017

The politicisation of food

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail, June 14.)

It seems nothing is safe from the scourge of identity
politics.

If you haven’t heard of identity politics, it’s the fashionable
ideology that breaks society down into minority groups which identify themselves according to their point of difference, whether it be based on culture, ethnicity, disability,
sexual preference or whatever. Often
these groups define themselves not only as different, but as disadvantaged and
even oppressed

It’s from identity politics that we get the notion of
cultural appropriation – the dogma that each culture retains exclusive rights
of ownership over its own traditions, and that anyone else who tries to imitate
or borrow them is guilty of theft.

This is surely one of the more spectacularly wrong-headed
manifestations of political correctness.

It provides perfect fuel for displays of liberal white
middle-class guilt. An example was the woman who protested at the inclusion, in
last year’s Christchurch Christmas parade, of a float with a “culturally
insensitive” Native American theme.

I wrote a column at the time pointing out that if we carried
the idea of cultural appropriation to its extreme, we probably wouldn’t
celebrate Christmas at all. Because virtually everything we associate with
Christmas – the music, the food, the decorations, even Father Christmas himself
– is borrowed from other cultures.

It doesn’t seem to matter that supposed acts of “cultural
appropriation” are often a mark of respect or admiration for the culture that’s
supposedly being stolen. What seems to be considered intolerable is the thought
that someone might make money from it.

As with many other fashionable political causes, whether
it’s global warming or anti-liquor hysteria, the underlying theme is often hostility to capitalism.

But when people start talking about this thing called
cultural appropriation, they’re wading into very muddy water. Because virtually
everything we do – the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the music we listen
to, the books we read – involves cultural appropriation, often on a large
scale. This is truer than ever in a globalised world where cultural boundaries
are becoming irretrievably blurred.

As the American novelist Lionel Shriver recently wrote:
“Cultures blend and overlap and can’t be fenced.”

Who decides when it’s not acceptable to emulate aspects of
another culture? This seems to depend on whoever decides to feel aggrieved.

Nothing illustrates the inconsistencies and contradictions
in this debate better than food, which has become –perhaps inevitably – the latest
ideological battleground in the culture wars.

A recent BBC radio documentary questioned whether it was acceptable
for people to cook food from another culture. It went on to ask whether it was
okay to profit from such food, or to tamper with recipes so that the dishes
were no longer wholly authentic. The implication seemed to be that this was all,
in varying degrees, cultural appropriation.

But even the most unexciting food has been culturally
appropriated somewhere along the line. Porridge, for example, came from the
Scots.

If the enforcers of culinary correctness had their way, presumably
the dozens of New Zealand fish and chip shops owned by Greeks and Yugoslavs –
and now increasingly by Asians – would be outlawed, since fish and chips are a
traditional English dish. Chips, come to that, are a French invention. See how
crazy it could get?

A black American chef and food writer on the BBC programme acknowledged that “cultural diffusion” was a natural and healthy process in a multicultural
society. He probably had to say that, since he wouldn't have got far as a professional chef without cooking a lot of exotic (i.e. non-American) dishes. So when does it become “appropriation”, which he clearly regarded as repugnant?

Alas, he never really explained. Appropriation, he said, was
about “asserting power and control”. He seemed to be saying that cultural borrowing was okay up to the point where white people made money from it,
but his reasoning was vague and woolly.

I suppose, for argument’s sake, you could understand him
resenting the fact that a big corporation such as KFC profits from fried
chicken, a dish once associated with poor blacks, but he didn’t explain how
black Americans were disadvantaged by it. That’s surely the test.

And if a middle-class white celebrity chef such as Jamie
Oliver or Rick Stein devotes a TV series or book to the food of another country
and puts his own spin on the recipes, so what? It creates a wider awareness of
that cuisine and thereby opens up opportunities for more authentic cooks.
That’s got to be a win-win.

Ultimately the key point is this: civilisation is built on
cultural appropriation. Every society
absorbs influences from other cultures, often cherry-picking the best of what’s
on offer.

This process cuts both ways, because disadvantaged societies learn
from more advanced ones. It’s not all about exploitation.

Those who seek to outlaw what they arbitrarily define as
cultural appropriation would condemn us to a monochromatic, one-dimensional
world in which we would all want to kill ourselves out of sheer boredom – and one
in which New Zealanders would be reduced to eating tinned spaghetti on toast,
since it’s one of the very few dishes we can call our own.

Our left-wing friends have, once again, become confused over their lax semantics. It is not cultural appropriation that is wrong - that is a natural consequence of peaceful mixing of cultures and is precisely what we all desire. No, it is cultural misappropriation that is the problem. The seizing of cultural icons, that have actual significance, entirely for commercial promotion in a way that offends the original culture. The latter part is vital. It is not the province of social justice warriors to object. It must be done by representatives of the original culture. Thus Maori elders from the local marae objecting to the use of the Haka to promote a three day sale at the Warehouse is perfectly reasonable. Someone objecting to another person wearing moccasins, even if that person has some Native American ancestry, does not.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.